'Repo Games': Turning Poverty Into A Game Show

The insider term for the goal
of those who produce reality television shows, those who assemble
the footage into episodes, is a profane one. I learned this from a
reality television producer (who wished not to be named so as to
continue being a reality TV producer). “We in reality TV talk about
‘shit to gold,'” RTP said. This is the mechanism by which some soul
is given an opportunity to overcome an obstacle. “The audience
loves seeing shit turn into gold.” Objectively speaking, they
certainly do.

I was talking to RTP about this peculiar little program called
“Repo Games.”
The show is, naturally, about repos. Home foreclosures may hog the
headlines, but little tiny foreclosures, or ‘automobile
repossessions’ are a quieter reality of these modern times. In
2009, 1.9 million cars were seized for loan non-payment. More than
5,000 vehicles a day were repossessed, 5,000 sad little
transactions that make no one happy. So what could be more American
and more now than producing and broadcasting a game show in which
debtors fight to save their potentially repo’ed vehicle by winning
a trivia quiz, for our home-viewing edification? A show like that
could be called morally questionable. It also could be called
Tuesdays at 8 pm on Spike TV.

I’ve watched the three episodes that have broadcast at the time
of writing this, and the show is primarily nothing but disturbing.
It’s produced well—the cameras don’t shake, you can hear clearly
everything anyone says—but it’s an experience that requires a
number of actual showers to make you feel clean.

The premise is that a repo
man, in the course of his actual job, will casually mention to the
loan defaulter, once the vehicle is chained to the tow truck, that
if they play a little game, and they can answer three out of five
trivia questions, then they can keep the car and the loan will be
paid off. That sounds like an excellent opportunity for the
defaulter. In fact, on paper it is an excellent
opportunity. The trivia questions aren’t that hard. There’s usually
one of the five that’s a bit tricky, but never an impossible
question, like something about the Jewish calendar or the middle
names of the partly-famous. It seems a small price to pay for
having an auto loan in default paid off.

Actually, it’s a very big price: being broadcast to millions of
potential television viewers as someone in financial peril, plus
also possibly someone who is not very good at trivia. Not to spoil
anything, but four of nine “contestants” on the shows I watched did
not manage to win the Repo Game. The answers from the losers were
embarrassing (as are some of the wrong answers from the winners),
and enough so that repeating them would make this piece an
accessory to the crime. The actual repo men, however, are the
protagonists. They’re big fellows, but with gentle,
been-around-the-block affability. They’re the good cops, and they
manage to explain the game and read the questions. Yet what
charisma the repo men may have is not enough to elevate this show
into anything but a tawdry little twenty-two minutes.

The kneejerk response to the questionable is to ignore it. “This
is the worst thing ever, try it,” is a request to which no
one looks forward. The logic behind this is that by choking off
reference to the toxic crap, interest wanes and the toxic crap is
soon totally forgotten. But this toxic crap is particularly timely.
We live in what continues to be a recession. No matter how the GDP
may slowly rise and how many bulls roam Wall Streets, the people
aren’t feeling it. A big swath of the Baby Boomers are becoming
personally acquainted with permanent unemployment, and a
commodities spike has transformed the visit to the grocery or to
the pump into a potential cardiac event. Times are tough in a way
that times have not been tough in generations. Because of this,
“Repo Games” is potentially trenchant toxic crap, as it
distills all of the uncertainty and dismal prospects of the era in
which we live into a calorie-free nothing of a cheap reality show.
It turns the heartbreaking into the banal. It’s fascinating, like a
package in a train station that makes a sound that could be ticking
if you cock your head the right way.

***

Jennifer Pozner is a media
critic and journalist, and the author of Reality Bites Back: The
Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV. Her premise is
that reality TV is not a popular form that was borne of consumer
demand, but rather a business model that became ubiquitous as its
comparatively low production costs (and correlating high profit
margins) became evident to the rest of the industry. And the appeal
of these shows? She told me: “Reality TV is intentionally steeped
in social beliefs—deep-seated biases about gender, race and
class—that regress viewers to the intellectual state they had when
they were three or four years old.” The moral landscape of reality
TV is black and white and without any complexity at all.
Repossessees are looked down on because they are bad, solely by
virtue of being a repossessee in the first place. And these broad
strokes, the reduction of the world into the ethical structure of
the playground, is, according to Pozner, the intent of the
producers of reality TV.

When I struck up the conversation with the producer RTP, who has
worked in the field and in the editing room on shows both similar
and dissimilar to “Repo Games,” I asked right off, “Is there such a
thing as a moral responsibility when producing reality shows?”

“Hmm,” said RTP, and then paused. “I think my pause says a lot.”
It did. RTP emphasized that these shows were vetted by lawyers and
Standards & Practices offices of the networks. But, I asked, is
there ever a line that’s crossed? RTP answered, “Absolutely. You’re
exploiting people’s misfortune, bad decisions, etc., for
entertainment purposes. It felt gross. But it was case by
case.”

This brings us back to the Philosopher’s Stone of the industry,
“shit into gold.” Every debtor that trivias his or her way out of
their auto loan, and even every chance to do so, is a narrative
with an upward trajectory. RTP added, “Also, if the debtor guesses
wrong and they lose the vehicle, well, fuck ‘em. They couldn’t pay
anyway, so the audience doesn’t have to feel bad for ‘em. And if
they do win, then the audience can cheer for ‘em. The audience wins
either way.” On a basic level, Pozner and RTP agree: Reality TV is
engineered to draw us in by constructing these narratives that
punch lizard-brain buttons: empathy, contempt, jealousy.

And who are these people that we feel bad for? Their depiction
is the most upsetting aspect of the venture. Signifiers of lower
economic class status are abundant on the show. There are the
too-many-babies, there are the less-than-clean domiciles, and there
are slack-jawed vacant stares. It’s a vicious stereotype that
doesn’t so much cross the line as it does run over the line with a
lawnmower. It’s a field guide for the slanders used by those that
believe that debt, poverty and bad circumstance are always the
result of bad decisions and poor breeding.

I’m not saying that the events portrayed didn’t happen, or that
these stereotypes don’t exist for a reason. But the subjects for
each episode are not chosen out of a hat, and footage does not air
unedited. The tone is a choice, and the tone is “poverty porn.”

I asked RTP if the subjects of the shows RTP has worked on that
deal with similar socio-economic issues as “Repo Games” are ever
reluctant to appear. “Always,” was the answer. This may be the
reason that, if you hang around until the end of the end credits of
each episode, you’ll see a very small-print disclaimer stating that
those that appear on the show receive an appearance fee.

This is not to excuse the defaulters. But we the viewers are
never acquainted with the whys and wherefores of the reasons behind
the fiscal crisis of each “contestant.” Are they
Livers-Beyond-One’s-Means, or are they Actually Unfortunate, a
victim of an unexpected job termination or sustained medical
emergency? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, at least to the show, as
the show presents a little America where no personal financial
story is tragic and all defaulters are dirtbags by default.

And the heroes of the show, the Repo Dudes, are not immune from
this. They cannot avoid the subtle eyeroll or the resigned
condescension when commiserating with the eventually repossessed.
The Repo Dudes are not the authors of this, but they do not
transcend it. A conversation-ender used by one of them is, “Why
didn’t you pay your bills?” The Repo Dudes have bought into
whatever ingrained caricature of our debt culture that enables an
actual TV show to poke the less fortunate with sticks just to
giggle at their comical protestations.

Let’s go back to the conversation-ender, “Why don’t you pay your
bills?” Let’s take as a given that it’s a question that at all
deserves to be asked (though some would argue it isn’t). But if it
is, it’s also a question that deserves the opportunity to be
answered, and a peek into the lives of the scorned defaulters of
America, a peek that is not just pornographic but near-bukkakic, is
not a valid opportunity to do that.

***

“Repo Games” is not the sole
repo-themed basic cable enterprise, nor is it the first. If you’ve
spent time in the triple digits of your cable provider you may have
noticed “Operation Repo,” “Repossessed!,” “Wild Animal Repo,”
“Night Shift: Repo Men” and even “Airplane Repo.” Some of these
shows are straight documentary, and some are dramatic recreations
(think anything hosted by Bill Kurtis). They all deal with the
potentially sticky question of finding entertainment in the default
of debtors, so maybe the horse already out of the barn when it
comes to this particular topic. But “Repo Games” is not just an
exercise in voyeurism. It’s a game show, and a whole ‘nother nested
level of comment on the phenomenon of people having their stuff
taken away.

The industry itself is not a fan, even though the repo men are
clearly the stars of the show. “The program clearly depicts the
recovery business as a group of unprofessional, unlicensed,
lawbreakers,” says Les McCook, the Executive Director of the
American Recovery Association, a major trade association for the
recovery industry. “The number one thing the show gets wrong is the
violations of the debtors rights in almost every scene,” says
McCook. It may sound incongruous for a trade association to worry
about the rights of its non-customers, but asset recovery is a very
delicate job. “If the television show were to portray the recovery
industry as it really is, it would not have a viable television
program. Most collateral recoveries are conducted quickly and
quietly,” says McCook.

That’s some gritty stuff, above and beyond the drama of men and
women doing the dirty job of collateral repossession and the
“clients” who do not love them. Possibly the stuff of art—mention
must be made of course of Repo Man (and its
sequel?)—but is the repo industry something on which to base a
game show?

Those in the repossessions industry just want to get their jobs
done, without any undue attention and most of all without any
trouble. The ideal repo intends to have absolutely no contact with
the debtor until the job is completed. Repo men do not knock on
doors and ask the motorist to watch while their ride is snatched.
The drama, the hurt feelings and the obstreperousness of the
repossesses are exactly what the industry is trying to avoid, and
that is exactly the aspect of the industry that “Repo Games” is
popularizing. This is why the ARA is displeased. Says McCook, “The
public that watches these programs now believe this is how they
will be treated if they have the unfortunate occasion to deal with
a professional recovery agent. Part of the reason we have seen an
uptick in violence is that this expectation of mistreatment has
created an acrimonious relationship between debtor and agent before
the agent has ever had contact with the customer.”

“Repo Games” takes these transactions and yanks them out of
context. It’s not by accident. In the name of creating a product
that will garner eyeballs, defaulting debtors are lured out of
their homes and in front of a camera so that viewers at home can
alternately feel like there’s a chance out there because that lady
got her auto loan forgiven while simultaneously congratulating
themselves on the happy fact that they don’t have it as bad as
those poor goofs.

***

Terrible as it is, “Repo Games” catches the extant texture of
American life, almost as if it had been imagined as parody, as the
punchline of a in-joke between TV executives—”What about a show in
which [abhorrent thing happens and is filmed]? Right?” Right. (I
asked Pozner about the advent of “Repo Games”: “It’s not surprising
to me. I almost expected this about three years ago, as the
economic conditions became evident, a new subgenre of reality TV
that plays on the pathos of poverty.”) Maybe
Bumfights started out in a similar way, back when society
was less frayed by economic insecurity and could preoccupy itself
with bald meanness. Though, for the record, Bumfights never
made it to a broadcast medium, like “Repo Games”.

It’s no small coincidence that, fifty years ago this week, the
head of the Federal Communications Commission, Newton Minow, gave
a
speech to the National Association of Broadcasters. Minow gave
notice to the networks of America that the FCC was going to turn an
eye to the quality of content on the airwaves, after a period of
quiz show and payola scandals and general programming insipidness.
It was a really good speech, and it coined the phrase “vast
wasteland” (although the phrase that Minow hoped would stick was
“the public interest”). It’s worth quoting now:

Why is so much of television so bad? I’ve heard many answers:
demands of your advertisers; competition for ever higher ratings;
the need always to attract a mass audience; the high cost of
television programs; the insatiable appetite for programming
material. These are some of the reasons. Unquestionably, these are
tough problems not susceptible to easy answers. But I am not
convinced that you have tried hard enough to solve them.

Even though the speech is 50 years old, that passage could
easily be lifted from a speech given yesterday, as not only is the
list of pressures to which broadcasters succumb unchanged, but also
television is still bad.

Minow also addressed the unique nature of terrestrial broadcast
in the U.S.—the specific frequencies on which content is broadcast
are licensed to broadcasters by the government. Broadcasters have
not owned these frequencies; we have been giving them permission.
Minow said:

[The] people own the air. And they own it as much in prime
evening time as they do at six o’clock Sunday morning. For every
hour that the people give you — you owe them something. And I
intend to see that your debt is paid with service.

TV history is littered with embarrassments. Our parents and
grand-parents lived through the casual racism of “Amos ‘n’ Andy,”
the ingrained sexism of every ’50s show from “The Honeymooners” on
up, the socioeconomic patronizing of “The Beverly Hillbillies” and
“Petticoat Junction,” and the slur on affable clumsy people that
was “Gilligan’s Island”—all of these were icky. “Repo Games” breaks
out of that pack, however, bare weeks after its premiere. It is
offensive. It does not mean well, and no matter how many cars are
saved because someone knows the capitol of Iowa, it does no good.
The people’s airwaves should expect better.